Construction and Safety Performance

Among the classes I teach at University of California, Berkeley, is one on advanced construction safety. One of the students who works for a smaller midsize construction firm made an observation indicating that construction was an industry rife with hazards and that people were bound to get injured notwithstanding any effort on the part of the organization's management or project personnel. This comment also brought to mind the number of times I had been told by various foremen and safety practitioners working in the construction industry that construction is hazardous and injuries were inevitable. So, I conducted some research to provide the class with some relevant information and statistical data on how construction as an industry stacks up to others.

During the industrialization period in
the late 19th century, tens of thousands of workers were killed or seriously
injured in industrial settings. Industrialists paid little attention to work
conditions and the plight of the worker. These occupational conditions
eventually caused a social outcry, which led to the enactment of workers
compensation laws in the beginning of the 20th century. As a result, worker
injuries had a financial impact on industry, so efforts were made to find
ways to control such losses. Most of these interventions focused on making
the work environment safer. This was the beginning of engineering (physical)
controls in the workplace.

The Role of Unsafe Acts by Workers

Research into the cause of accidents
uncovered that, besides unsafe conditions, unsafe acts led to industrial
accidents. This theory, which is still held by many regulators, business
leaders, labor unions, and safety practitioners, has been rightly criticized
as oversimplified with too narrow a focus. The original unsafe acts theory
is associated with Herbert William Heinrich in a 1926 report called "The
Origins of Accidents." In it, Heinrich analyzed 75,000 accidents and found
that 88 percent of all accidents were caused by the unsafe acts of persons,
10 percent were caused by unsafe physical conditions, and 2 percent were
undetermined and labeled as "acts of God."

In 1969, while with the Insurance
Company of North America, Frank Bird analyzed over a million accidents
representing more than 3 billion person-hours worked during the exposure
period analyzed. The study resulted in the 1:10:30:600 ratios. For every
serious injury, this study found 10 minor injuries, 30 property damage
cases, and 600 near misses. A 10-year study of accidents by DuPont in the
mid 1980s found 96 percent of accidents were caused by unsafe acts and 4
percent were caused by other factors.

Studies such as these have placed the
focus on the worker's actions as the cause of accidents for which
interventions were developed and implemented. These interventions included
the development of different training modules, toolbox talks, safety
meetings, postings, etc. Many of these interventions are fundamental
elements in the safety standards promulgated by various states or the
federal government. These interventions, along with physical controls, are
at the core of virtually every safety program implemented in industry. And,
to ensure compliance by the workforce, most safety programs have some form
of site inspection as well as sanctions. Some even have incentive programs
to facilitate and encourage compliance.

In the past 100 years, we have come a
long way in reducing industrial accidents and injuries. A total of 4,609
fatal work injuries were recorded in 2011, according to the Census of Fatal
Occupational Injuries program conducted by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics
(BLS). The rate of fatal work injury for US workers in 2011 was 3.5 per
100,000 full-time equivalent workers. Fatal work injuries in the private
construction sector were 721 in 2011. Compared to other industries,
construction has the second highest number of fatalities and the fourth
highest rate. The construction fatality rate range averages 2–4 times higher
than those in the other industries. One may attribute this to construction
being "more dangerous" than the others. However, I believe this is something
of a myth.

Injury Rates in Various Industries

Rather than fatalities, let's look at
the injury rate of various segments of the economy. Construction is
considered part of the goods-producing sector of the economy. The 2011 BLS
published data indicate the following.

Private Sector of Economy (Goods Producing)

Annual Average Employment (thousands)

Total Recordable Cases

Days Away from Work, Job Transfer, or Restriction (DART)

Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing

974,900

5.5

3.2

Mining

669,700

2.2

1.4

Construction

5,576,700

3.9

2.1

Manufacturing

11,627,700

4.4

2.4

From this data, it is obvious that, within the private sector, there
are other industries with higher injury rates. Another segment of the
economy the BLS uses is service providers. One would expect service to be
less hazardous than construction. The 2011 BLS published data indicate the
following.

Private Sector of Economy (Service Providers)

Private Sector of Economy (Service Providers)

Total Recordable Cases

Days Away from Work, Job Transfer, or Restriction (DART)

Transportation & Utilities

24,924,600

3.9

2.3

Information

2,692,600

1.6

0.9

Financial Activities

7,505,600

1.4

0.6

Professional & Business

17,299,200

1.7

0.8

Education & Health

19,065,400

4.7

2.1

Leisure & Hospitality

13,514,800

4.0

1.6

From the above data, it is
evident that there are other industries that employ far more people than
construction that have injury rates that are equal to or higher than
construction. This shows that those who state construction is a dangerous
endeavor are using it as an excuse for their company's injury rate and are
propagating a myth. There obviously are other salient factors that affect
the injury rate.

Behavioral Aspect

A further development in the
safety management process was the introduction of behaviorism as an avenue
to control worker actions in occupational settings. What has become known as
behavior-based safety (BBS) is based on the work of I.P. Pavlov, J.B.
Watson, E.L. Thorndike, and B.F. Skinner, to name a few. Skinner is known
for the development of operant conditioning. It basically worked on changing
behavior by the use of reinforcement, both positive and negative. This
approach was developed by subjecting laboratory animals (mice and pigeons)
to electric shocks or rewarding them with food to elicit certain behaviors.
Skinner proposed that the way humans learn behavior is much the same as the
way animals learned to press a lever in the lab experiments. Basically,
behaviors are causal factors that are influenced by consequences.

The
application of behaviorism to the safety management process was a vast
improvement over the traditional interventions that preceded it. In the
1980s and much of the 1990s, many organizations adopted BBS. There is no
question that this process reduced the accident rate of these organizations,
but it did not eliminate all incidents. If fact, many of the large
consultancies that were preaching "grass roots" BBS started talking about
leadership and its effect on worker behavior by the late 1990s. In the human
condition, there is complexity. The worker has to successfully function in
the organizational environment. This includes the organizational culture,
the climate, systems, politics, and people (management, supervision, and
peers), and, at the operational level, there are production goals, task
design and demand, tools, equipment, human dynamics, etc.

Then there is
the worker to consider. The worker has expectations, biases, perceptions, an
agenda, and needs (emotional, economic, physical, etc.), as well as his or
her own personality. All these factors influence the worker's
decision-making process. So, the organization may actually or inadvertently
put its workers into situations where they may perceive that they have to or
actually have to choose between following safe work practices and meeting
production expectations to stay employed.

Private versus Public Sectors

In looking at the BLS published data, we find some additional
interesting information. The BLS has an additional classification for
workers working for state and local agencies. One would expect working for
the government or public agencies to be less hazardous than construction or
other sectors in the private industry. The 2011 BLS published data indicate
the following.

Sectors of the Economy

Annual Average Employment (thousands)

Total Recordable Cases

Days Away from Work, Job Transfer, or Restriction (DART)

Goods Producing

18,849,000

4.2

2.3

Service Industries

88,849,000

3.3

1.6

All Private Industries

107,654,200

3.5

1.8

State & Local Governments

13,678,900

6.1

2.6

The injury rate in both the recordable as
well as the DART rates for government is higher than almost all the goods
producers, as well as the combined rate of all the private industry sectors.
So, the question is: What makes the public work different from private work?
The work certainly is not more complex or more hazardous than private work;
so it must be the result of how the workforce is managed. There certainly is
a difference in the management systems, policies, practices, and the value
proposition between these private and public sectors.

These differences
are clearly linked to the contexts within which these leaders and managers
have to operate. The former are under constant financial and marketplace
pressures to improve results and increase benefits; the latter are guided by
a huge number of rules and regulations, with responsibility to politicians.
Private sector leaders are prepared to take calculated risks, while public
sector leaders distance themselves from problems and take a risk-aversive
approach to solving them. The former often have clear and measurable
objectives and are judged on the outcome they produce; the latter often have
unclear objectives and are constantly confronted with a range of
stakeholders and pressure groups, ready to condemn every mistake or failure.
Based on the fact that public sector leaders often operate in an overly
structured environment, governed by rules and regulations, it is normal that
they essentially focus on monitoring what is going on and how things are
happening, rather than on guiding and stimulating the teams for which they
are responsible. So, if this conclusion is even remotely valid, it would
seem to indicate that many organizations go about managing the safety
process in an ineffective way.

What Is Safety?

Safety is not a
thing, nor is it an activity in and of itself. At work, people do things
that produce results. In construction, workers work, which results in an
outcome (work completed). If they work effectively and efficiently, they are
productive. If they follow prescribed methods or practices in their work, it
meets expected quality requirements. How they go about performing the work
may injure them. This would indicate that task design, task demand, make
ready, communication and information, production goals, exposure, and risk
assessment, as well as operational planning of the activities, all play a
significant role in the prevention of injuries.

Some of the fundamental
elements of management are planning, organizing, directing, staffing, and
controlling. If a construction operation is to function at a high level of
safety performance, the operational plan must take into account the risk of
injury. The organization must address the sequencing and execution of the
work and potential exposures. Workers should be provided with the
information and resources to enable them to safely perform the tasks.
Management should provide proper guidance (direction) to ensure effective
practices. Management should make proper worker selection and assignments
that place the "right" worker in the "right" work situation. Management must
ensure that it is overseeing the practices and procedures (control)
performance to ensure the "right" outcome.

This may not totally remove all
the risk of injury, but it is guaranteed to significantly improve
performance (productivity and efficiency), reduce waste (rework), improve
safety, and increase profitability as a result.

Opinions expressed in Expert Commentary articles are those of the author and are not necessarily held by the author's employer or IRMI. Expert Commentary articles and other IRMI Online content do not purport to provide legal, accounting, or other professional advice or opinion. If such advice is needed, consult with your attorney, accountant, or other qualified adviser.

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